Some parents bake cupcakes. Others coach soccer. But when William Newsome decided to do something for Palo Alto's Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, he turned up at his son's seventh-grade science class bearing a formaldehyde-preserved human brain. Newsome, a Stanford professor of neurobiology, discussed the organ's role in sustaining life. Then he encouraged the kids to handle and examine the specimen.
That 1995 visit was, of course, a smash hit. "There was this buzz," says Newsome, who has steadily expanded the program. In February, his graduate students ran brain workshops for all seventh-graders in the Palo Alto school system. The kids got to see brains from rats, fish, owls, monkeys and humans. "It clears up a lot of misconceptions," says science teacher Beverly Woodruff. "And they get to see how many wrinkles there are in a brain -- a lot!"
